Now back in our hands, took over by government

I blame all the football supporters that scammed them every other week for dodgy refunds!

funny, Grande Central are trying to survive charging £70 return hartlepool/Kings X and National Express wonder why they go bust charging £24 for Darlo/Kings X return. It's not rocket science

On average though I bet people pay 50 a seat on there and they're always pretty busy. There must be more to it....

Put it this way nat express £170+ one way 1st class single (from Darlow) or Grand Central £72 1st class single to London (Hartlepool) which one would use choose?

I'd sit in Standard Class with the cool kids!

National express signed an eight year contract in 2007 to run the east coast main line,but they had to pay the government £1.4bn
The same reason gner went bust,they should have stuck to running coaches.

This week I paid £188 1st class return London kings Cross from Hartlepool with Grand Central, From Darlo it would have been £266 and from Newcastle £284 with National Express

Flash Bugger, dam them access to wall plug sockets and table seats have went up a lot

Charging prices like that, you can see why passenger numbers fell.